Questions: Hard Determinism and Hard Incompatibilism

Question 1

Hard incompatibilism (Pereboom) differs from hard determinism primarily because:

• A. Hard incompatibilism allows that some free will exists under indeterminism
• B. Hard incompatibilism denies that determinism is true, while hard determinism accepts it
• C. Hard incompatibilism concludes that basic desert responsibility is absent even if the world is indeterministic
• D. Hard incompatibilism only applies to criminal justice, not to everyday moral blame

Answer: (C)

Hard determinism gets its conclusion (no basic desert responsibility) by assuming determinism is true. Hard incompatibilism is more powerful: it argues that even if the world is indeterministic — even if quantum randomness is real — this doesn't give agents the kind of ultimate authorship that basic desert requires. Random events in your neurons are not 'yours' in any morally relevant sense. The conclusion is the same (no basic desert), but it survives even if physics shows the world is not fully determined.

Question 2

According to Pereboom's four-case manipulation argument, what is the key claim that makes ordinary deterministic action resemble the neuroscientist-controlled case?

• A. Both cases involve the same person performing the same action
• B. No principled distinction marks where moral responsibility enters as manipulation decreases and ordinary causation increases
• C. Neuroscientists who manipulate brains are morally responsible instead of the agent
• D. The argument shows that all cases involve conscious deception

Answer: (B)

The four cases form a continuum from direct brain manipulation to ordinary deterministic action. Pereboom's challenge is to identify the principled distinction that would make someone responsible in case four but not case one. Since the intermediate cases differ only in degree — less direct external manipulation, more 'internal' causation — and since there is no non-arbitrary place to draw the line, responsibility cannot enter as we move along the continuum. If it's absent under full manipulation, and no principled distinction marks its reentry, it's absent under ordinary determinism too.

Question 3

Hard incompatibilism implies that retributive punishment — inflicting suffering on wrongdoers because they deserve it — cannot be justified.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: True

If no one is the ultimate source of their actions in the way basic desert requires, then no one deserves to suffer for what they've done in the retributive sense. Hard incompatibilism directly targets the desert-based justification that grounds retributive punishment. This doesn't mean all state responses to harmful behavior are unjustified — incapacitation, rehabilitation, and deterrence can be justified on consequentialist grounds — but the idea that suffering is intrinsically appropriate as a response to wrongdoing collapses.

Question 4

Hard incompatibilism implies that we can no longer meaningfully distinguish between voluntary actions and actions performed under coercion.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: False

Hard incompatibilists explicitly preserve this distinction — they deny it as a *desert* grounding distinction, not as a meaningful distinction at all. Voluntary actions better predict future behavior; rehabilitation is more feasible for voluntary agents; coerced actions tell us less about what the person would do freely. These distinctions matter for consequentialist reasons (prediction, effective intervention) even if they don't justify desert-based blame. The view denies desert, not the practical significance of the voluntary/coerced distinction.

Question 5

Why doesn't the presence of quantum indeterminism rescue basic desert moral responsibility, according to hard incompatibilism?

Model answer: For an agent to have basic desert responsibility, she must be the ultimate source of her action — the action must genuinely originate from her in a way not reducible to prior causes outside her control. Quantum indeterminism introduces randomness, but random events in the agent's neurons are not hers in any morally relevant sense. They weren't controlled or authored by the agent; they just happened to occur in her brain. Randomness transfers authorship no better than determinism does — it replaces determination by prior causes with determination by chance, neither of which constitutes the kind of self-authorship desert requires.

This is why hard *incompatibilism* is a stronger and more durable position than hard *determinism*. Hard determinism is hostage to physics — if indeterminism turns out to be real and deep, hard determinism's premise fails. Hard incompatibilism is immune to this: it argues the desert-grounding control we need is unavailable whether or not the world is deterministic.